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GregoryJ.Bancroft,BScHons,PhD Professor DepartmentofInfectionBiology FacultyofInfectiousandTropicalDiseases LondonSchoolofHygiene&Tropical Medicine London,UnitedKingdom
Fig. 1.8 Three phases in neutrophil migration across endothelium A neutrophil adheres to the endothelium in a venule (1) It extends its pseudopodium between the endothelial cells and migrates towards the basement membrane (2) After the neutrophil has crossed into the tissue, the endothelium reseals behind (3) The entire process is referred to as diapedesis. (Courtesy Dr I Jovis.)
othercircumstances,notjustphagocytosis.Forexample,antibodiesboundtoparasiticwormsallowthemtoberecognized byeosinophils.Anothertypeofantibodybindstoreceptors onmastcellsandallowsthemtorecognizesolubleantigens (see Chapter10).
• Mostcellsoftheimmunesystem derive from haematopoieticstemcells. Theprimarylymphoidorgansinmammalsarethethymusandbonemarrow, wherelymphocytedifferentiationoccurs.
• Phagocyticcells are found inthecirculationasmonocytesandgranulocytes. Monocytesdifferentiateintomacrophagesthatresideintissues(e.g.Kupffer cellsintheliver).Neutrophilsareshort-livedphagocytespresentinhighnumbersinthebloodandatsitesofacuteinflammation.
• Eosinophils,basophils,mastcellsandplatelets,togetherwithcytokines and complement, takepartintheinflammatoryresponse.
• Innatelymphoidcells are of twokinds:thosethatproducecytokinesin responsetomicro-environmentalsignalsandthecytotoxicNKcellsthatrecognizeandkillvirus-infectedcellsandcertaintumourcellsbyinducing apoptosis.
• Antigen-presentingcells link the innateandadaptiveimmunesystemsand arerequiredbyTcellstoenablethemtorespondtoantigens.
• Lymphocytes are phenotypically, functionallyandmorphologically heterogeneous.
• BlymphocytesandTlymphocytesexpressspecificantigenreceptors called the B-cellreceptor(BCR)andT-cellreceptor(TCR),respectively.
• Secondarylymphoidorgansandtissueprotectdifferentbodysites: the spleen respondstoblood-borneorganisms;thelymphnodesrespondto lymph-borneantigens;andthemucosa-associatedlymphoidtissue(MALT) protectsthemucosalsurfaces.
• Mostlymphocytesrecirculatearoundthebody: there is continuouslymphocytetrafficfromthebloodstreamintolymphoidtissuesandbackagaininto thebloodviathethoracicductandrightlymphaticduct.
Thelysosomescontainperoxidaseandseveralacidhydrolases,whichareimportantforkillingphagocytosedmicroorganisms.Monocytes/macrophagesactivelyphagocytose microorganisms(mostlybacteriaandfungi)andthebody’ s ownagedanddeadcells,oreventumourcells.
Thegranulesinmatureeosinophilsaremembrane-bound organelleswithcrystalloidcoresthatdifferinelectrondensity fromthesurroundingmatrix.Thecrystalloidcorecontains the majorbasicprotein(MBP),which:
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others on this earth are now striving to silence theirs. "For God's sake," I would say to them, "beware!" Such hardening of the heart against the Holy Spirit, such God-murdering (for it is the wish to kill God, and to silence His voice for ever) is the one unpardonable sin which is a thousand-fold more awful in its consequences than is the crime which it seeks to conceal. It was the foulest stain on the soul of him who hung by the dying Saviour, and it is, I believe at this moment, the one and only thing which still keeps Hell Hell, and Satan Satan.
Must I write further of the torture-throes of that awful moment, when I first saw my sin in its true light? God only knows how even now I shudder and shrink at the mere thought of it; but I have told you of my crime, and it is right that I should speak also of my punishment. I remember that when the realization of what I was, and what I had done, was first borne in upon me, I fell to the ground and writhed and shrieked in agony. The tortures of a material hell,—of a thousand material hells,—I would have endured with joyfulness could such torture have drowned for one moment the thought-anguish that tore me. Nay, mere physical suffering—physical suffering meted out to me as punishment, and in which, though it were powerless to expiate, I could at least participate by enduring—I would have welcomed with delirious gladness, but of such relief or diversion of thought there was none. From the mere mention of annihilation—the personal annihilation of soul and body, of thought and sensation—I had ever shrunk with abject loathing and dread; but to annihilation, had it been then within my reach, I would have fought my way through a thousand devils. But in hell there is no escape through annihilation; suicide, the last refuge of tyrannous and cowardly despair, is of none avail,
"And death once dead there's no more dying
then."
What had to be endured I found must be endured, and that unto the uttermost, for in all horrid hell there was no nook or cranny into which I could creep to hide myself from the hideous spectres of the past. I remember that I rose up in my despair, and stretching vain hands to the impotent heavens, shrieked out as only one can shriek who is torn by hell-torture and despair. I fell to the ground and writhed and
foamed in convulsive and bloody agony I dug my cruel nails deep into my burning eyeballs, and tearing those eyeballs from their tender sockets, flung them bleeding from me; but not thus could I blind myself to the sights of hell, nor could mere physical pain wipe out from my brain the picture of the ruin I had wrought. And then—but no, I am sick, I am ill, I am fainting; I cannot, I cannot write more.
CHAPTER VII.
SHOWS THE FITNESS OF MY PUNISHMENT.
"But there will come another era, when it shall be light, and when man shall awaken from his lofty dreams and find his dreams still there, and that nothing is gone save his sleep."—J P . Preface to "Hesperus."
THE following paragraph is taken from a diary which I kept before my decease. I will explain later on my reason for giving the extract here:—
"It has been said that no man can realize to the full the certainty of his own dissolution; that each acknowledges the inevitability of death in regard to others and to the race, but cherishes a secret conviction that he himself will, through some strange and unforeseen circumstance, prove the solitary exception.
"Of the truth of this assertion as a general rule, I cannot of course speak, but I know that I at least have never so thought. On the contrary, there are moments when death (by which I do not mean annihilation, but the dying into life) seems the only certainty there is before me, all else being shadowy and unreal. I am a child of eternity dreaming the dream of time, and even while I dream I am half awake and know that I am but dreaming. Life is to me—not poetically only, but positively—a dream and unsubstantial. The world is a dream, things and persons are but dreams, and exist for me only in my thoughts of them. My self-consciousness becomes awake, and I look in and down upon myself with a wonder as fresh and novel as if the mystery of my own existence had never caused me wonder or surprise before. I stretch out my hand, as an infant does, and open and shut the fingers, and ask myself who I am and what I am doing here. I tell myself my name, and I see that the hand, the body, and the clothes that I look down upon have a strangely familiar aspect,
but the name conveys no meaning to me, the familiarity is but the familiarity of an oft-dreamed dream, and is, I know, but the sign that I am still dreaming.
"I look out each day upon the face of the earth with as much wonder and surprise as if I were some new-comer thereon, and were opening my eyes upon it for the first and only time. Upon London and the life of it, though I passed half my days within the sound of St. Paul's, I gaze and wonder as upon some dream-pageant, with everincreasing awe. I look up upon that ample dome, large-looming, and brooding like a Presence athwart the skies, until its surroundings and itself and those who come and go in the streets are to me as unsubstantial as 'a city visioned in a dream.'
"So supremely conscious am I at such times that 'We are such stuff As dreams are made of, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep,'
that were I, while this mood is on me, to open my eyes one morning and find that all this present world and its dream-creations had passed away for ever, there would hardly stir in my heart one momentary thrill of surprise, for I should but sigh and say, 'Ah, then, at last it has come, and now I am asleep no longer!'
"What the awakened life for which I am waiting will be like, I know not consciously, but something there is within me that does know, and that has a dumb inarticulate knowledge of it, like the memory of a dream which we have not all forgotten, yet cannot all recall. That it will be Life, I am sure—a life which though orbing in ampler cycle and vaster sweep than this life, is yet on one and the same plane with it, and in no way separate and distinct. Nay, even now this dream-world would seem to be surrounded and insphered by the waking one, even as 'time is but a parenthesis in eternity;' for there are realities in this unreal existence, flowers and faces, love and poetry, and the morning and evening skies, which have to me no part in this perishable world, but which 'torment me ever with invitations to their own inaccessible home.'"
I have transcribed this extract from my earlier diary, not because I think there is anything in it worth preservation, but because I believe it very aptly illustrates the suitability of the punishment meted out to me in hell to my own peculiar temperament. I was one of those who lived only in thought. "The world is a dream," I said, "things and persons are but dreams, and exist for me only in my thought of them." Hence to make my punishment a thought, to confront me with the memory of my crime and of its consequences, and to leave me thus hell-haunted by the cry of an awakened conscience, was to inflict a torment upon me a thousand-fold more terrible than material pain.
To those, however, who think with Heine, that "mental torture is more easily to be endured than physical pain," I have a word to say. When I was in hell, I saw there the souls of men and women whom I had known in life, and I learnt something of the nature of their sufferings. Unlike my own, that punishment was, in many cases, not mental but physical; and to those who are incapable of realizing what agony a thought can bring, let me say that hell has too its bodily punishment, and punishment from which there is no escape.
CHAPTER VIII.
MAKE AN UNEXPECTED DISCOVERY IN HELL, AND MEET WITH AN OLD
ACQUAINTANCE.
"The servants said unto Him, Wilt Thou then that we go and gather them up? But He said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest."—M . xiii. 28, 29, 30.
ICOME now to what I think is the strangest part of my story. "When any one dies," I had been told in childhood, "he goes to one or the other of two places—either to hell or to heaven—according to whether he has been a good or bad man," and I recollect being not a little troubled in my childish mind as to what became of the people whose virtues were about equally matched with their vices (as I had even then discovered was not seldom the case), and whose chances between hell and heaven were what we used to call in my schoolboy days (I do not say it irreverently) a "toss-up."
"Even God must be puzzled sometimes," I used to think to myself, "to know what to do with the folk who are not wicked enough for hell, but a little too bad for heaven." Once after I had been taken to hear a long evangelical sermon, I thought I saw a way out of the difficulty by assuming that when God "weighed" a man (I use the phraseology of the sermon referred to, and I remember that not being clear as to how much of the language was figurative or otherwise I had an idea that souls really were weighed in some sort of celestial balance) and found him "wanting," He turned the scale in the sinner's favour by pouring in some of the blood of Christ. I can recall, too, that for a day or two I went about fancying myself quite a juvenile theologian, until the conviction that even God must draw the line somewhere, set me thinking that a good many folk would thus be consigned to the bad
place for doing that which was only a very little more wicked than was done by those who were admitted to the good one.
My ideas about hell and heaven, even at the time of my death, were not very clear and not very many, although I do not think they were more cloudy and less practical than are the ideas entertained upon the subject by other folk. I had been brought up in all the oldfashioned orthodox and scriptural notions, and "going to heaven" was as inseparable in my mind from upward motion of some sort as "going to hell" was with downward motion. Each of the places was a separate and distinct one—the former being situated, according to my belief, somewhere in the direction of the zenith, while the latter I localized in the bowels of the earth, and connected in my thoughts with fire and darkness. Now let me give the results of my experiences, premising only that in regard to what I have to say about the after life, it must be understood that I am speaking only of that ante-chamber of the spirit-world—that in some sense purgatory, as I am half inclined to hold it—into which I have had admittance.
My experiences, then, are briefly these. The good and the bad are not parted, but exist together as they exist here, and heaven and hell as separate places have no existence.
I will tell you how I first came to discover this. I have said that after my change (in the spirit-world that which we call "death" is spoken of as the "change") I awoke to find myself in "hell," and I ought perhaps to add that I used the word as indicating a state of mental or physical suffering—in my case the former—and not with any local significance.
Even in hell, however, there are moments when the intensity of the suffering is, for a narrow space of time at least, relaxed, and when the anguish-stricken spirit is mercifully allowed a temporary reprieve. Such a moment occurred after the first awful paroxysm of selfloathing and torture which I experienced when my past life was made known to me in its true colours, and it was in this saner, and comparatively painless interval, that I met in the spirit realm one whom I had known and honoured on earth as a woman of the purest life and character. Being still under the impression that I was in "hell"
in the sense in which I had been accustomed to think of that place, I started back upon seeing her, and hardly noticing her words of greeting, cried out in astonishment, "You here! You! and in Hades!"
"Where else should I be except where he is?" she answered quietly, adding, as she observed my look of evident perplexity, "It is Arthur, of course, of whom I speak."
I remembered then that when I had known her first, her only living relative was a worthless brother of that name, to whom she was passionately attached, but who had been dead so long that I had hardly any recollection of him. Before I could question her further, I suppose she saw something in my face which told her all that was necessary to be known of my own story, for she suddenly burst into tears, and taking both my hands in her own with a gesture of compassionate grief, exclaimed, "Forgive me my foolish and selfish forgetfulness! Oh, I am so, so sorry!"
It was from her that I first gathered that even for me there was yet hope, and it was from her lips that I learned much of that which I have to tell of the spirit-world.
"Do you think," said she to me, when I had again expressed my wonder at finding that heaven and hell were not as I had supposed, separate places, "Do you think that I could be happy anywhere separated from my brother? Why, even Dives in the parable was unable to forget the five brethren he had left behind him, and cried out amid the flames, asking that Lazarus might be sent to warn them, lest they too should come to that place of torment. Is it likely, then, that any wife, mother, or sister, worthy the name, would be content to settle down idle-handed in heaven knowing that a loved one was in hell and in agony? I know there are folk on earth who try to smooth out the creases that crop up in the creed-roll of their convictions, by asserting that the truly regenerate soul will unconditionally surrender everything to the will of God, and that they, for their part, are quite prepared to leave the fate of their erring fellow-creatures in the hands of the Creator. I don't say that they are not right in so speaking, although, as far as I am concerned, I have more sympathy with old Dives and his wish to warn his sinning
brethren. But how are we to know what is the final will of God in regard to one's fellows? When we are satisfied that a man who has fallen into the water is dead, we may not unnaturally conclude that the will of God, as far as this world is concerned, is that he should come to an end by drowning, and we must bow to that will; but as long as we can see a 'kick' left in him, we feel that we must do all we can to bring him round again. Isn't that natural?"
I suppose I must have manifested some surprise at the plainness of her speaking, for after glancing at me for a moment with an amused smile, and with a twinkle of her old humour (I mean that kindly eyetwinkling of humour which is not far removed from the trickle of a tear-drop, and which, for all her piety, had been a noticeable element in her personality), she said, as if in reply to what was in my mind, "No, I don't speak like a sanctified spirit, do I?"
I was a little taken aback by her question, but answered that I was somewhat surprised at the homeliness of her speech, but was glad to find that death had left her old personality unaltered.
"Of course it has," she answered, "my personality is just the old personality of my earth-life, and I should not wish it to be otherwise. To awaken after the change, which you call death, only to find that one's personality had been transformed into that of another person— no matter how excellent that other person might be—would not be immortality but transmutation. But you were about to ask me a question concerning my brother before we got upon the subject of personality," she continued; "you didn't put your question into words, but your looks expressed it, and thoughts cannot be concealed in the spirit-world."
"Yes," I said, "I had a question to ask you, and it is this: You know how surprised I was to find that heaven and hell are not, as I supposed, separate places. Now what is God's reason for allowing the good and the bad to exist together here, as they do on earth? Is it because He shrinks from breaking up the old family-life (as it must be broken, if right-doers and wrong-doers be set apart), and because He would still use the influence of the good to reclaim the evil?"
"Even that," she said, "I cannot tell you, for I am a mere child in His kingdom. I do know that many of heaven's noblest are engaged, as I am, in striving to stir up souls to repentance; but whether our efforts to save the sinner from his sin after death are of any avail, I cannot say positively, for it has not been given me to know. We are told that after His death our crucified Lord preached to the spirits in prison; and although the theologians will explain it all away for you if you will let them, I believe that He came here to hell in search of the socalled lost, and I don't think I can be doing anything opposed to His will, in trying all I can to save my brother."
"When you and I were on earth together," she continued, after a pause, "you once sent me a copy of the Contemporary Review, containing an article written by Dr. Knighton. The name of the article was 'Conversations with Carlyle,' and the writer related one conversation in which I was very much interested, and which I have often thought of since. I read it so many times, that I think I can remember it word for word.
"'I was going to tell you about an Indian poem which some one sent me translated,' said Carlyle. 'I think it was called the "Mahabarat." It describes seven sons as going off to seek their fortunes. They all go different ways, and six of them land in hell after many adventures. The seventh is of nobler seed; he perseveres, fights his way manfully through great trials. His faithful dog, an ugly little monster, but very faithful, dies at last. He, himself, fainting, and well-nigh despairing, meets an old man, Indra disguised, who offers to open for him the gates of heaven. "But where are my brothers?" he asks; "are they there?" "No, they are all in hell." "Then I will go to hell too, and stop with them, unless you get them out." So saying, he turns off and trudges away. Indra pities him, and gets his brothers out of hell. The six enter heaven first, the seventh stops. "My poor faithful dog," says he; "I will not leave him." Indra remonstrates, but it is useless. The faithful dog, ugly as he was, is too well remembered, and he will not have paradise without it. He succeeds finally, Indra relents, and lets even the dog in. But, sir,' added Carlyle, 'there is more pathos about that dog than in a thousand of our modern novels, pathos enough to make a man sit down and cry almost.'"
"Yes," I said, "I remember the story well. I wonder what old Carlyle would say about it now? Have you ever seen him here? or Emerson? or Richter? or Robertson of Brighton?"
"Robertson!" she answered; "as yet I know only one of the many circles into which the spirit-world seems naturally to resolve it; but I suspect that if you and I could see where Robertson is, we should find him infinitely nearer to the Father-heart of the universe than I at least can for countless ages ever hope to attain!"
"What do you mean by 'circles'?" I said. "Am I to understand that there is a kind of sifting and sorting process going on, by which each human soul is, on its arrival here, assigned a fitting place and level among his or her spiritual fellows?"
"I don't know that I should express it quite in those words," she answered, "although I cannot think just now of a less clumsy way of putting it, but there is some such gathering of like to like as that of which you speak. The majority begin, as we did, in this lower circle, and remain here until they are fitted to move onward to a higher sphere. Others take a place in that higher sphere immediately, and some few are led into the Holy Presence straightway. To die is not to close the eyes on earth merely to open them the next minute in heaven; it is not a sudden transition from darkness to light, or from light to darkness. No, it is a slow and gradual awakening, for no human soul could bear so sudden a shock. Your own transition was, comparatively speaking, an exceptionally rapid one, but I know of some who have been 'changed' for a quarter of a century, and are only now becoming conscious of the fact. Of one thing you may be certain, and that is that God is never in a hurry in the education of a human soul. He works in this world as in the natural one, not by fits and starts and sudden convulsions, but by slow and imperceptible developments, and none but Himself knows what He is going to make of us before He has done—if indeed He ever will have done, which I question. Whatever sphere of work He may assign to us here is the one for which He has all along been preparing us. Our Saviour told the disciples that in His Father's house were many mansions, not one big one where they were all to dwell together, but 'many mansions,' and that He went to prepare a place for them; and you
may be positive that He would not so have spoken were not some individual preparation necessary.
"I do not know in which of these 'mansions of the blest' Frederick Robertson, of whom you ask, is now dwelling, but you must not think because his spiritual circle is far removed from mine that all communication and companionship are cut off between us. On the contrary, he is often, very often, here, and I have not seldom held soul-communion with him and felt his spirit near to me. This circle, however, is but the outer edge of the spirit-world—only one step, indeed, removed from the life of the earth and of the body—and I don't think we are capable yet of understanding the finer distinctions of spiritual companionship." And then her voice seemed to sound to me like the voice of one in the far distance, I felt the darkness closing in upon me on every side, and knew that my hour of punishment was again at hand.
Upon the details of that punishment it would serve no good purpose again to dwell, and if in the next two or three chapters I make only a passing allusion to my subsequent sufferings in Hades, the reader must understand that it is not because those sufferings had in any way ceased to be, but because I wish to put more prominently forward the singular facts in regard to the condition of others, which came to my knowledge during the time of my sojourning in the spiritworld. That these facts were not without their own influence in bringing about the change in myself, hereafter to be described, will, I think, be apparent to all, but that change I shall not attempt to trace out, step by step, to its ultimate development. It is of what I saw and heard, rather than of what I endured, that I now come to speak, and although my recollections are all too disconnected and fragmentary I give those recollections just as they still linger in my memory, and without attempting to follow too closely the narrative of my own personal doings in Hades.
CHAPTER IX.
I SEE SOME STRANGE SIGHTS IN HELL, AND AM FAVOURED WITH SOMETHING IN THE NATURE OF A SERMON.
"They eat, and drink, and scheme, and plod, They go to church on Sunday; And many are afraid of God, And more of Mrs. Grundy."
IT is a long time ago since Religion first took to preaching at the World, and now at last the World has grown wearied of it, and has taken in her turn to preaching at Religion; and in this verse by Mr. Locker-Lampson she has a text which is sternly, trenchantly, grimly true in its satire. I know there are folk who affect to be scandalized at what they consider an irreverence, but I for one can recall no sermon in which the worldliness and the worthlessness of many so-called Christians have received as terrible a rebuke as they have in these lines by a writer of vers de société.
I will tell you why I have introduced this topic into my diary When I was in hell, I saw one there whom, save for his averted looks and pitiable endeavours to escape my observation, I should probably have passed unnoticed. He was one of those at whom the verse I have quoted is directed. His pitfall in life had been nothing more vicious than vanity. He was a coward who was so blind in his cowardice that he feared God less than he feared Mrs. Grundy, and who, in order to secure the approval of man, had not scrupled to do that which he knew was hateful to his Maker. His life had been a living lie. Love of approbation was so strong in him that he was never happy except in perpetually posing and in endeavouring to pass himself off for that which he knew he was not. And with what result? That he had spent his days in preparing for himself his punishment. The one and only aim of his existence had been to win the approval of others, and, lo! one morning he awoke in Hades to find himself the
despised of the despised and the laughing stock of the very Devil. He had so pandered to his love of approbation that it had grown at last into a disease, and I saw few more pitiable sights in my wanderings than that of this wretched creature, slinking shamefacedly through hell, and wincing, as from a blow, at the glance of every passer.
Of all vices none is so vindictive to its wretched victim as vanity. It is continually craving for the wherewithal to gratify its insatiate appetite, whilst growing but the hungrier for a meal. The very clamorousness of its demands not seldom defeats its own purpose, for sooner or later it is sure to be discovered, and none of us honour the man whom we suspect of "jumping" to gain our good opinion. Of the power which vanity may acquire over a human soul I read lately an awful instance. We are told that the last emotion visible on the face of Pranzini, the French murderer, as he stood waiting to be despatched into eternity, was a simper of gratified vanity (and what share vanity had in bringing him to that scaffold only He who reads all hearts can tell) at being the prominent object of interest to so large and distinguished an assembly. And that as he was about to step with blood upon his soul into the presence of the Great Avenger!
"Men create their God after their own image," says Mr. Stigand in his "Life of Heine"; and it is a fact that the conception of God changes with the manners and morals of a people. To our Puritan forefathers He was a just but awful Judge, who, from His home in the vast abysses of space, kept an unwinking watch upon us, His creatures, and, with eyes of telescopic minuteness, noted every breach of His commandments, in order that He might visit it with a fiery and fearful vengeance. That man-created God is no more: He is dead, and another God reigns in His stead; but in our natural reaction from the conception of the vindictive God of past generations, we have come, in these days, to lose sight of the fact that our God is a chastening one. Not only have we turned a deaf ear to the thunders and the
threats of old-fashioned orthodoxy, with its talk of everlasting punishment and lakes of brimstone, but many of us pooh-pooh the thought of a hell at all, and speak of God as though He were a goodnatured and weakly-indulgent parent, on whose leniency we might lightly presume, forgetting that sin—unrepented sin—never can and never must go unpunished.
It was in this contemptuously indifferent way that one whom I knew well on earth was accustomed to speak. He was a man of free and open disposition, with a perfect genius for friendship, but his life would not bear too close an inquiry. I remember his being warned in my presence of the punishment which must await the course he was pursuing, and his answering, as I had often heard him answer before, that even if he were on the road to hell (if, indeed, such a place existed, which he was inclined to doubt), he had at least the consolation of knowing that plenty of other "good fellows" were bound for the same destination, and that he was quite sure that he should feel more at home among the sinners in hell than he should among the saints in heaven.
Well, when I was in hell, I saw a sight there which is worth recording as an example of the ingenuity of the Devil in apportioning to each person the punishment best fitted to his individual case. I say "of the Devil," because I learned that he has a part (under certain restrictions and by Divine permission) in the imposition of necessary chastisement, and he is therefore an unwitting worker in the kingdom of heaven. He has indeed been such a worker from the beginning, for in spite of his serpent-like cunning and subtlety, he was the first fool, and will be the last. The acknowledged and ancient enemy of God, he is and has been playing into the hands of the Almighty for ages, and among all fools none is so simple a fool as he.
The sight, then, to which I have referred was that of a desolate plain, low-lying and unlighted, and in the centre of it there roamed one who called out ever and anon, as if in search of a companion, but to whom there came no answer save the distant echo of his own cry. A more lonely and lifeless spot I have never seen. The silence which brooded over the place seemed sometimes to oppress the forsaken wanderer like a presence, for, with a half-affrighted and despairing
cry, he set off at a panic-stricken run, as if seeking to escape this silence by flight; but, notwithstanding his haste, he made, I observed, no progress, for he was but moving round and round in one continuous ring. Of this, however, he seemed unaware; for once, when he passed near me, I heard him cry out as if in despair, "Is there no living soul in all this void and voiceless desert?" And, as he hurried by, and I caught a sight of his face, I saw that it was the face of the man who had said that hell would not be hell to him so long as he and his boon companions were together.
Another former acquaintance that I met there interested me even more. He was a man whom I had always regarded as deeply religious, and his presence in hell (by which I mean as one who was undergoing punishment) was to me the greater cause for surprise.
"What is it," I said to him, "that brings you here? not impurity, surely? and I cannot think of any other reason."
"No," he answered, "it is not impurity, for that was never one of my failings. To this day, I am unable to understand the relish with which most young men (and occasionally, be it said with shame, those who are not young) listen to the kind of conversation which is current sometimes in the smoking-room. We hold our handkerchiefs to our noses when we pass a place where there is an unpleasant odour, and turn hastily away if we come upon a repulsive sight; and impure talk affects me always as does a disgusting object or a nauseous smell.
"You are surprised at finding me here in hell, because you have always believed me to be one who thought much and felt deeply on religious subjects. But you forget that to have religious feeling, and to act upon religious principle, are in many ways distinct. There are men who, though they are naturally incapable of lofty thought, would scorn to do anything immoral or mean; and, on the other hand, there are men who feel intensely on all religious subjects, who pray fervently and often, sing hymns with eyes streaming with tears of
heartfelt earnestness, and yet their actions are not seldom unworthy, and their lives will not bear too close an inquiry. 'There is no selfdelusion more fatal,' as Mr. Lowell has said, 'than that which makes the conscience dreamy with the anodyne of lofty sentiment, while the life is grovelling and sensual.' It is a delusion which bids a man close his eyes lest he see where he is going; it comes to him with its harlot-beauties daintily draped in the robes of an angel of light, and sings hymns before the very gates of hell. It is because I am one who so deluded, or who tried so to delude himself, that you and I meet here to-day We set out together with the broad path and the narrow path before us. You, by one fatal and irrevocable step, swerved to the broad path from the narrow, and that single step plunged you headlong and hopeless into this abyss. And I, well, I appeared to myself and to others to be walking in the narrow way; and yet, by the making of continual divergences, so trifling as to seem of but little or no account, I find myself eventually in the same awful abyss that you are in, and on a level fully as loathsome as your own. Though I have committed no such crime as you have committed, I was, in the petty details of my daily life, habitually untrue; and so the time came at last, in which, with every desire to serve God faithfully and to follow the dictates of conscience, I found that the power to make my will subservient to my wishes had slipped unnoticed from me. Habit has the strength of a giant, for good as well as for evil, and the will to do right on every occasion is as much a matter of training as is mere physical strength. The man who is habitually untrue in small things, cannot, even though he wish it, do right in great ones, any more than the man of untrained muscle can, by a mere exercise of volition, lift weights which would try the practised athlete. The only way in which to become Christlike is not to endeavour to feel so, not to seek to arouse sentiment or emotion (as drunkards fly for strength to stimulants), but to make Christliness the persistent and unconditional habit of our lives. We must learn day by day to resist the first rising of a desire to do, or to say, or to think, that which we know diverges by the hundredth part of an inch from the path which conscience would have us to walk; and we must so school ourselves that we can, by sheer force of will, rise above
the mood of the moment, so that we act not by impulse or by inclination, but by conscience."
He stopped, and, reading my thoughts, said, in reply to them: "Yes, there is, indeed, something grimly humorous in my setting up to preach to others; but it cost me my hope of heaven, and a lifetime, to learn the lesson, and God knows I have it by heart at last! One more illustration and I have done. Let us suppose that you and I are standing on the deck of a ship which is steering straight for a certain haven, and that you put your hand on the helm and shift her a fraction of an inch from the line on which she is running. The angle at which you have swerved from that line may be so utterly infinitesimal that it might be measured by a hair's breadth, but let that angle be carried out to its ultimate destination, and you will be borne miles and miles away from the harbour for which you are bound.
"Remember, then, when next you are called upon to make choice, be it in never so trifling a matter, between good and evil, between obeying conscience or disobeying her, that you are choosing in that moment between hell and between heaven, not for to-day, this week, or to-morrow, but for eternity!"
CHAPTER X.
A LOVE STORY IN HELL.
"And shall my sense pierce love,—the last relay And ultimate outpost of eternity?"—D.G. R .
SOME years ago, a near relative of mine, the editor of a certain paper, was taken seriously ill, and was told by the doctors that complete rest was absolutely necessary for his recovery. As I had frequently assisted him in the preparation of "copy," and was acquainted with the routine of his office, it was arranged that I should attend on certain days in each week, and be answerable for the work during his absence. The journal was one which was made up largely of extracts from other papers, and my duties consisted less in the selection of original matter, than in the more prosaic plying of pastebrush and scissors; but the number of manuscripts received was large, and for a week or two at least I tried conscientiously to give each separate packet something like a fair consideration. I remember that the very first manuscript on which I was called to pronounce judgment was one entitled, "The Strange Confessions of a Bachelor." It is too lengthy to be printed here in full, but as the lovestory from which my chapter takes its heading was largely attributable to the publication of this manuscript, I have transcribed some paragraphs from it, which I think will serve to give the reader a general idea of its tone.
T S C B .
"Yes, I am in love, although as yet I could not tell what the name of my love is or will be. But in every inspired poem or perfect picture, in the soaring and sobbing of music, in sunrise and sunset, or in the sighing of the wind upon my cheek, there is something which speaks to me of her, and which beckons my spirit forth in search of her, as if by the leading of an unseen hand. And sometimes, but only in my
